Interview with Marie Hertzsch Amos

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Interview with Marie Hetzsch Amos, by Bowers, Harford County Library, July 1, 1994.
BOWERS:
ALLEN:
This is Bowers, and I'm sitting with Marie
H. Amos, a well-known and respected educator, perhaps best remembered as Principal of Highland Elementary School, and now many years retired. And I think widely considered a matriarch of the Highland community. Marie, let's go way back to the beginning so we can get to know Marie Amos. Where were your born, and who were your parents?
My mother was Mary Pauline My father was John Christian Hetzsch. He got his citizenship here. They both came from Germany.
B: I don't think I've ever seen that name.
MA: Well, you haven't been down to the graveyard. [laughs] And that was out on -- well, I guess it's still called Bel Air Road in Baltimore County. And I was the oldest of the three girls.
B: And that's where you lived. Where was that now? MA: I forget the name. It was on Bel Air Road.
B: In Harford County?
MA: No, in Baltimore County. B: That's where you were born?
MA: Yes.
B: What was the year? MA: 1904.
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
So you were born in Baltimore County, and you grew up there until what age?
I was fourteen when I came up here.
And your parents and your whole family moved here? Yes.
And came to the Highland community at that time? Yes. just a mile down the road. [laughs] Your parents bought a farm?
No. They had a garden. My father was a great garden for this man, and they just lived in -- I guess you'd call it a peasant house.
What was the name of the road? Green Nursery. [laughs]
B: On Green Nursery Road. Okay.
MA: Of course, it didn't have a name then. There's a picture of station, you see?
B: Oh, right beside the Station? MA: Yes.
B: Is the house still there that you grew up in? MA: Yes. I walked every day to Highland.
B: You walked from there to Highland Elementary School, as a student?
MA: Except the day when it was storming or something.
Then we went on the train. [laughs] And we didn't get there, of course, until about ten o'clock.
B: Because the train was very slow and it made a lot of stops?
MA: Yes. Well, it only had the one stop to make from here to Highland Street. A couple of they called a street, I guess.
B: So you were one of Highland's early students, I guess. You were born in 1904, and the school was built in 1909, I think.
MA: 1907.
B: And so you started school in what year? MA: 1914 until 1918, I guess.
B: You started to go to Highland in 1918?
MA: Well, before I went to Highland, I went to Cherry Hill -- the other direction. We're just halfway between the two. And it was a one-room school.
B: Oh, I see.
MA: I had been going to a school in Baltimore County, where the boys went in one door, and the girls went in another door. [laughs]
B: Oh, really!
MA: And we went home for lunch. We could go home for lunch. Well, there were five sections. I was in the fifth grade, and there were five sections. I came up here to this one-room school, where there were the little six-year-olds, as well, I guess --
some of the boys were eighteen. [laughs] So I had quite a time. I cried and cried.
B: Oh!
MA: Especially when the teacher would play "Home, Sweet Home." [laughs]
B: You were homesick. [laughs] So your first school then, was a one-room schoolhouse at Cherry Hill?
MA: Yes. And I've been trying to find out when it was built, but I know it was there -- my teacher that I had there at that one-room schoolhouse just died last April.
B: Oh, who was that?
MA: She was a hundred. Mary Berkins. B: Mary Berkins was your teacher?
MA: Yes.
B: And that school was located on Cherry Hill Road? MA: Yes.
B: Whereabouts?
MA: Well, at least a mile in from where Cherry Hill and Green Nursery cross.
B: Okay. So it's
MA: We had to walk down to Green Nursery Road with our bucket, to get our water, to drink. [laughs] And that was another thing, except we had
We all drank out of that sink. [laughs]
B:
MA:
Did that bother you? [laughs]
And carrying my lunch bothered me because I was used to running home.
B: So it was different from Baltimore County. MA: Yes.
B: Quite different. You had to be a certain age to begin at Highland then.
MA: I don't know how I decided to go to Highland. Well, a lot of people went when they were in the seventh grade, so they'd sort of be used to it before they went into high school. So I guess maybe that was
B: Okay. So you started at Highland then, you think, around 1918?
MA: Yes.
B: And you would have been fourteen years old. MA: Yes.
B: What do you remember from your early days at that Cherry Hill school? Do you remember any of your classmates, and what were the conditions there?
You've already said that there was no running water there. You had to go out and pump your drinking water.
MA: Yes. And we had a little outhouse out behind. One
side for the boys and one side for the girls.
[laughs] And we had our wood pile out there, and the boys usually brought in the wood. But we had the big pot belly stove. Oh, we had recess at that time -- fifteen minutes -- and we had an hour for lunch. And in an hour for lunch, we would go down over the hill, and we had these tremendous grape vines, and we would just swing back and forth on these grape vines. [laughs] I remember one time I went to hear Billy Sunday, and she left one of the older girls in charge. And we weren't very good.
B: Oh-oh. [laughs]
MA: In fact, we went out and had a mud battle. [laughs] so we had several days of sitting in for our lunch periods and our recess periods, and I will not bear false witnesses. [laughs]
B: Who was Billy Sunday? MA: One of the evangelists.
B: What about some of your classmates there? Who do you remember? Some of the people who still live around here?
MA: Well, Glenn , who is at the Bel Air Nursing
Home, is still living. All my sister-in-laws went there. Of course, they live right there at the bottom of the hill. Let's see who else is living. I guess there aren't any, because my sister-in-law
died, my sister died.
B: That was a long time ago. MA: Yes.
B: So you came up to Highland. What do you remember from your first year or two there? What was that like, going to the big school?
MA: They just had two grades in one room, and Mrs.
Pauline Bay was my teacher. She was Pauline Wilson at that time. And Charles Gladen has told me since then, that before school started she said, "Now, there's a new girl coming to our room, and she has a name quite different from anything you've ever heard." [laughs]
B: [laughs]
MA: And we lined up front and marched, and Curtis Famous
-- Dr. Famous' son -- made a little drum for us to march in by. [laughs]
B: Really? Because you were new students? MA: No. We did that every morning.
B: Oh!
MA: She had us march in. B: Oh, I see.
MA: And we went to our places and sat, and we had the scripture reading, and the village prayer, as a rule, before school started. Of course, she taught
one grade and then the other. The others had study periods, I guess you called them, where we wrote notes. [laughs] The thing I remember about Cherry Hill School -- oh, that first, second or third day I was there, I was sitting in front of Glenn
it happened to be, and I had two pigtails, and he put them in the ink well! [laughs]
B: Really! [laughs] Those things really did happen!
MA: Yes!
B: At Highland, what was the average day like there?
Was it a six hour day?
MA: We started at nine, until four. I guess you could call it six hours. And we had -- in the afternoons, we went to the little room right behind it.
Highland had the two rooms in front and one in back at that time. And after two-thirty, the younger children -- the first and second grade -- were
dismissed for
and they walked home. And we went over there, and Mrs. taught
She was Mrs. after that. And
we had recess periods. We'd run down, over the hill over near where William lived, where
the grange hall was. That was a wonderful picket fence! [laughs]
B: Oh, really?
AMOS 9
MA:
And sometimes we'd be a little bit late coming back, and so we'd have to stay after school. And that was still true when I started to teach at Highland. And I remember Palmer Hawkins and Charles Hawkins. They brought me picket fence so I wouldn't keep them after school. [laughs]
B: Is that right?
MA: There aren't any picket fences around here anymore, now.
B: We have them at our farm. MA: Oh, really?
B: Yes. Quite a few. MA: Good.
B: Oh, well, I'll bring you some next time.
MA: I'll have to bring my to pick them. B: Well, they'd be welcome. Now, you stayed at
Highland, then, from 1918 to -- MA: 1921.
B: So you would have graduated from there from high school. You finished eleventh grade there.
MA: Yes.
B: Then you decided to go on to State.
MA: Yes. We packed our trunks. We knew we weren't
going to get home until Thanksgiving.
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
That was a long drive back then. Yes.
The road were quite different then. Yes, they were. But we went on the Railroad.
Oh, you did? You were able to take the train? Yes.
B:
MA:
How nice!
[laughs]
that group, and then Sara Webster and
Mary Barlow -- there was six of us who went from Highland that year. When we'd get to the Hyde Station, the man would come in and yell, and we'd hide down behind the [laughs] Oh, we had a lot of fun.
B: So were you all going to study education, and to become teachers?
MA: That was all we did at that time. It was just for
teacher training.
B: That's right. It was a teacher's school. MA: Yes.
B: When did you decide to become a teacher, and what
led to your decision?
MA: Well, when I first graduated from high school I wanted to be a nurse. And so I registered, but I wasn't old enough to enter. I mean, you had to
eighteen. So I went to
B: So that was the only determination? Really? MA: Yes.
B: What a disappointment. You really wanted to be a nurse. [laughs]
MA: Well, teachers I had. Especially Mrs.
I don't remember any of the teachers I had in Baltimore County. But I remember Mary Berkins and Pauline Bay.
B: Oh, that's interesting. Elementary school teachers are more important than college instructors. [laughs]
MA: [laughs]
B: So you came back from
was it? A four year program?
after -- what
MA: No, two years. And in between that time we had a group -- two, I guess -- missionaries from India, who talked to us, and I got so involved I was going to go right to -- I did sign up with
[laughs]
B:
MA:
Really?
Miss was the Principal, and she called in and she said, "Don't you remember that you signed the paper that you were teaching in Maryland for two years? So you cannot go as missionary to India!"
So that was the end of my missionary project. [laughs] Except I keep up with Pauline.
B: I keep up with my sister. Tell me about your first years of teaching.
MA: Well, the first year I lost nine pounds in two weeks. [laughs]
B: Now,
MA: Yes.
those
why was that? Was it that stressful?
I had fourth grade to the ninth grade. And ninth graders were supposed to be ready to go
to Bel Air in the fifth grade. So I had to teach
their subjects. So I wonder what I did with the
fourth graders. [laughs] Of course, they helped
out with the fourth graders. Oh, we had our
Christmas programs there. We had to walk two miles
to practice for our graduation, down at the
would
Station. And, of course, that's where they have to go to meet the train to come back to
Bel Air. And one of my people just died just
recently.
Scarp. She's a sister-in-law of
Oh, what was her first name? And
every once in a while -- especially when I'm down at
the hospital, where I've been so many times lately -
- somebody comes in and says, "Do you remember when
you taught me at Youth Benefit?"
AMOS 13
B:
MA:
Youth Benefit? You taught there? Yes. It was a two-room school then.
B: Oh, I see.
MA: And it was on Pleasantville Road. It wasn't quite where the Youth Benefit is now. But there was a family -- the Preston family -- Preston's parents -- who lived on Pleasantville Road a little later, and the older sister of , and in fact, they took me along for -- when we went to Bel Air it was every Wednesday night, I guess it was and signed. And I remember Mr. Preston always
said -- he insisted -- that there would be a high school in that area. That was way back there, in 1925.
B: In Bel Air?
MA: At Youth Benefit. There were schools every two miles. There was another two-room school in
, and the next one was Youth Benefit, and the next one was two miles up the [laughs] And what was the next school? It was right on the
County Line?
B: Near Lake Hall?
MA: No. Webster at Youth Benefit. And two miles down the road the other way -- on Pleasantville Road -- taught. And
AMOS 14
I've been trying to think of the name of that school, where she taught. The boys had gone there.
B: There were schools every two miles? MA: Yes.
B: And that was how they were built. And these were all the one-room schoolhouses.
MA: Most of them were two-rooms.
B: So that all the children in the communities would basically walk to these schools.
MA: Yes. And bring their lunch. And we had the stoves, and I always had such a time getting the fire started. [laughs] The Amos' happened to be -- what's the name of that road? well, anyway, we had about a quarter of a mile to walk to school.
And the teacher who taught the and I roomed together at the same house, and we ate together. I remember sometimes we thought we didn't have enough to eat, and we bought hot dogs at the store, and put them down the lamps. You know, we had lamps then. We didn't have electricity.
B: What do you mean you put them down the lamps? To heat them up?
MA: Yes. [laughs] We had a chimney
know, she'd know. She couldn't help but know because it was off the side of the
You
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building. [laughs] Anyway, I still hear from here. She's still down at a nursing home in North Carolina. She's an aunt to Mrs. Earle Beatty. She was Virginia Copenhaver.
B: Copenhaver. There's a Copenhaver Road.
MA: Yes.
B:
MA:
Is that the family?
That's right. Same family. And Miss was our supervisor. And I remember going to have her hair cut. So I cut it. Imagine me cutting her hair. You see how brave I was!? [laughs] So I cut her hair. And Miss came in, and she looked at me and she said, "I am ashamed of you. I am disappointed in you." She looked like a greased pig. [laughs] Of course, we weren't supposed to wear any make-up of any kind. Mr. Wright was our Superintendent, and we had a meeting at the beginning of school. All the teachers had to be there. Some of them would play hooky and go to the state fair, but he called the role. And he always said scripture, and I remember he always said, "Judge not that you be in that judged." [laughs]
He tried to impress us with the fact that all the children were coming to us to talk. And then he always gave this little talk about no make-up and no
AMOS 16
hair down their back. be quite an example.
B: Right.
[laughs] We were supposed to
MA: More than today, I believe.
B: Well, was that difficult? Because you were all still fairly young.
MA: Yes. And we had the same sort of thing at
We couldn't go to breakfast down our back. And we weren't supposed to cut our hair or wear any make­ up. And we had grace at the table.
B: So when you cut your colleague's hair, you bobbed her hair.
MA: Yes.
B: And that was very -- you just weren't supposed to do that.
MA: No.
B: You were supposed to have long hair, up in a bun, or up on your head.
MA: That's right. And another thing that I did that I wonder why, because now I can hardly a nail. There was a little organ there that just sat in the corner. It couldn't be used at all.
B:
MA:
B:
Where was this?
And so I made a bookcase [laughs] You made a bookcase out of the wood from the organ?
MA: From the organ. [laughs]
B: Now, did you get in trouble for that?
MA: No, no. I don't think I was complimented.
B: This organ wasn't being used anymore, was it? [laughs]
MA: I don't know. I suppose somebody had given the organ at one time. complaints about it. And, of course, we didn't have PTA. But we did have Christmas, I guess. And maybe Thanksgiving.
B: Was Youth Benefit the first place you taught? MA: Yes.
B: So you went right there. And that would have been in the 1920s.
MA: 1923. I was there from 1923 to 1925, and then I went over to Chestnut Hill. Because Mr. Wright said
-- they had four teachers the year before. [laughs] And he sent me there to be sure that we had
And we did.
B: Violet Merryman taught there for a while.
MA: Yes. A good many years. Violet Merryman was born the day I graduated from Highland. [laughs]
B: Oh, really! So you were at Chestnut Hill first! MA: That's right. [laughs] And both of my sisters-in­
law taught there. And Grace Gilbert taught there.
And Mary Jones. Other folks from because it was easy to get to. I guess they the wintertime. right down the bottom of the hill from school, and I remember sledding home from
school.
B: Really?
[laughs]
MA: And the lady with whom we boarded even packed their lunch. So then she became ill, and we had to well, we lived right beside the school, where they had two little children, who we had to help take
care of. [laughs]
B: Oh. So you were really busy. MA: Yes.
B: Youth Benefit, which is maybe fifteen or twenty
miles from here, and would have been from your parents' house, was probably difficult to get to, back in the 1920s.
MA: Oh, yes. I went on the Railroad, down to
Falston. Well, met me there. But there was a friend there, too. Well, she was a sister of my teacher at the one-room school. And she would take me on up to my boarding place.
B: By car?
MA: By car. A little old Ford.
B: So it may have taken forty-five minutes or an hour
to get to Falston from here.
MA: Oh, yes.
B: So that was why you boarded. MA: Yes.
B: You could not make that trip in the morning -- every morning -- especially in the wintertime, with snow.
MA: Oh, no. No, we didn't even come home every weekend. B: You didn't?
MA: No.
B: So you boarded with a colleague because it was a two-room school, and so you had one other woman teaching there.
MA: Yes.
B: What was her name? MA: Virginia Kopenhaver.
B: That's right. Virginia Kopenhaver. Now, you boarded together.
MA: And roomed together. We did everything together. [laughs] One afternoon we were out walking, and the people who lived across from us had this beautiful field of turnips, and we used to turnips. [laughs] Well, I guess we got several turnips. But that was quite a joke about it -- he kept getting the turnips.
B: Did you cook them?
MA: No, we ate them raw.
B: You ate them raw? Oh, my. Yes, that is brave. So
you were at Youth Benefit for two years, you said.
MA: Yes.
B: And then you went to Chestnut Hill.
MA: And I was there just the one year, and then I came to Highland. And you know, in those days, when the Superintendent would select you, but then the Trustees of the school -- you had to see each one of those to see if they approved of his appointment.
So I remember Dr. Famous was one of them, and Mr.
D.G. Harry, and Gladen , right over here. Having an interview with him is [laughs] And when I got a scholarship at Patterson, I had to go meet the several people, and then I had to pay it back, of course. [laughs] Oh, Mr. Wright when he hired me for Youth Benefit --
B: C. Milton Wright?
MA: Yes. He would see that I was getting twenty-five dollars a week, and a dollar a month to sweep the floors and keep the fires clean. [laughs] He said, "You know, that's very good salary. That's more than many secretaries are being paid." [laughs] So I got about eight hundred dollars a year that first year. I wasn't getting much more than that when I
came to Highland. I guess about a thousand dollars a year, when I came to Highland, and then I just had the two grades -- sixth and seventh. And I taught them then until 1931, when James Nelson was born.
And then I didn't teach for ten years, except to substitute. Sometimes I substituted all the time. I remember taking James Nelson more than one time. He was very good about sitting there in the chair. And, of course, the children helped take care of him. [laughs] But then we came home and he wanted to play, and I said, "Well, I have so much to do, and I can't. You can go play by yourself." He said, "You didn't do a thing but talk all day!" [laughs]
B: "So why should you be tired, Mom?" MA: Yes!
B: What do you remember from your early days of teaching at Highland?
MA: We had such good support from the parents. This one wasn't like it is. I mean, they seemed to know they had to do what they did. Fortunately we had someone who came in, and she could [laughs] Wilbur tells the story about sitting there and throwing salt. We always had the picture of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln
Most pieces of chalk behind the picture without getting [laughs]
B: At Highland, how many students were there? And how many grades when you started?
MA: All eleven grades were there then. B: One through eleven?
MA: Yes. No kindergarten or preschool.
B: Was that before or after they made the addition to the school?
MA: Well, the addition was made -- I'll have to look in my book -- let's see. When I taught there it was just the two rooms in front and the one room in back. In 1957 they added the four rooms in the back.
B: So when you started there it was just the four rooms.
MA: Yes. There was just three rooms downstairs and three rooms upstairs. And in the basement, next to where the pump room was, it was where they taught the chemistry. We didn't have Phys. Ed., I guess. Yes, we did. Because we had a basketball team that won the championship for the school. [laughs]
B: Oh, really?
MA: Yes. was sort of in charge of that. B: So you taught grades six and seven?
AMOS 23
MA: Yes. And then after 1941 and 1942, when Miss Fisher, who was supervisor then, came and said that they needed another teacher at Dublin, and she wondered if I would take it. It was first grade.
Miss had always told me I could teach anything except sixth and seventh grade, because I was so stern. [laughs] But anyway, I had been in the hospital for six weeks. Anyway, I called the doctor, and he said I could try to go. So that was war-time, of course. My husband took me over as far as to the little church. I mean, it was a schoolhouse then. Schoolhouse. And then I got on the school bus and went to Dublin.
B: Route 40, back up to Dublin.
MA: 440. And then in the afternoon, I had to be ready to leave when the bus left. So I'd come back there, and then my husband would meet me there. And I remember we stopped at the store at that time, and I got an ice cream cone every afternoon.
B: Every afternoon?
MA: Yes. Mary Jones said to me one time, "You keep eating those ice cream cones and you'll gain weight galore!" [laughs] So I did. [laughs] When I taught at Dublin, the high school teachers went in one door. was one of those teachers.
AMOS 24
B:
MA:
Oh, really?
Yes. And we went in the door that was a little bit lower. We weren't supposed to go up the high school door. Mr. Hannah was the Principal there then.
B: Miles Hannah? MA: Yes.
B: I didn't know you were at Dublin. How long were you there?
MA: I was there from September -- well, when I went there, I went with my basket of things for little first graders, you know? And I had a fourth grade. It was over the top of the furnace room, so it was pretty warm. And one of my pupils at that time was Dr. Hank. You know, it was up at the Children's Center. They came over there and started -- would start to say the prayer. Well, anyway, I had fourth grade. So that was quite a surprise. [laughs]
B: So you were expecting to teach first, and instead you were teaching fourth.
MA: Yes. And then -- I guess it was about January of
that year -- of course, as soon as you became pregnant, you reported that and you didn't teach anymore. Of course, before that, when you were married, you couldn't teach anymore. But for this time, it was when you became pregnant. And the
teacher in the second grade at Highland became pregnant. So I asked Mr. Wright about coming back there because of the trouble I was having with transportation, and getting enough gas to even be left by my husband. [laughs] He was so good to me. He took me all these places. I drove on our honeymoon, and I drove for a month or two after that. And then the gas thing started, and I went up the back, and turned the car upside down. So my mother was on one side of the hill, my mother-in-law was on the other side of the hill, and between the two of them, they persuaded my husband I wasn't to drive anymore. So I didn't.
B: Wow!
MA: I drove a tractor after we came up here on the farm. B: So you were at Dublin for how long?
MA: From September to January.
B: And then you came back to Highland?
MA: Yes. I came back to Highland in the second grade. So I taught. That was Inez She was Inez Stuart. She's still living, but not in the community. She's in a retirement home up in Pennsylvania. She is a cousin of Pearl Lawors. And
because their mothers and their fathers
-- their mothers were sisters and their fathers were
brothers. [laughs] That's like the Wilson family. They all married Schuster girls. [laughs]
B: So when you came back to Highland, you stayed at Highland then, after that?
MA: Yes.
B: And that's where you had your longest teaching career.
MA: Yes.
B: How many years? Thirty-some? MA: I don't know. It was from 1942.
B: This newspaper clipping says you were a teaching at Highland for twenty-two years, and then served as Principal for seventeen of those years.
MA: Well, when the high school moved up to
day. [laughs] Miss Fisher came along, and asked me if I would keep the roll books. As I understood, she was the Principal of the schools, like they do in Pennsylvania. And then we would serve under her. Well, instead of that , and I had the second grade, and they moved it up to -- do you remember that little room that's right off the steps?
B: Yes. Right.
MA: Well, that's where I had my desk. B: Yes, I remember.
MA: When I finally got a telephone. But I often taught my reading class right there.
B: Oh, really? In that small office?
MA: Yes. And that year I had fifty in the second grade. B: Oh!
11A: I remember Ruth Ann Cruit, when she came. Children looked up and they said, "Oh, not another one!" [laughs]
B: Fifty students?
MA: Yes.
B: Were they split in two classes?
MA: No. You put them in groups according to their reading groups.
B: Oh, I see.
MA: And math. But when I went back to Highland, in Inez' place -- do you remember when we had the petitions under where we kept the coats and hats?
B: Yes.
MA: Well, there was a little boy that you had to watch when he had to go to the bathroom, and he had a little pan back there, and you took it back there. [laughs] I don't know whatever happened to him.
But we had mainstream, like we have now. We had the children who were crippled or of that sort, as well as the other children who didn't have much mental
You just gave him something to do, and watched him. The children were just better in those days. [laughs] I remember Eunice Harry. We did so well when she had her first May Day,
were in charge, and we went to different schools to see the May Days, and Eunice would take care of that second grade. I remember I taught the seniors, who were to do a Russian dance right outside the window. So Eunice was inside the plant. [laughs] And, of course, they're right next to the
interesting. Hr. Cruke had such a big
that he'd be teaching them this Russian dance.
B: May Days were an annual tradition at Highland for many years.
MA: Many years.
B: I remember participating in May Day. All I can remember doing was dancing around the May Pole.
MA: [laughs]
B: What do you remember as significant changes in education over the years at Highland'?
MA: Well, when I was a teacher, I still would like to have my own teaching because they could do the music. I didn't do very well in music. But along with the reading -- now they go through so many different places. They go someplace for
AMOS 29
reading, they go some place for Phys. Ed. [laughs] And I don't know whether I really think the children get confused moving from one personality to another, besides walking up the hallways of and hear I saw one group going into music, and another group was going to the library. And they were doing pretty well.
Once in a while one would punch another one. [laughs]
B: So you think all the moving about is distracting?
MA: Yes.
B: And that having one teacher provides them with a greater leadership and role -- someone to look up to?
MA: Yes. Of course, it makes a different world they're going into. They're not as protective as they were, I think.
B: Tell me about the Highland community at large. What
was the community like in the 1920s and 1930s?
MA: If you weren't a Heaps or a Wilson or a , you weren't much. [laughs] And you were just sort of accepted. Then, after I went to high school -­ well, I was valedictorian because I wasn't one of them. I wasn't allowed to make a speech. I mean, I didn't.
AMOS 30
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
Is that right?
Yes.
That's very interesting.
And after I taught there, there was some sort of a contest -- county contest. It was a composition that they were supposed to write. And the one that I chose out of the sixth and seventh grade class wasn't one of the group. And I remember the one lady came to me and said, "You know that we can't have her represent Highland." But then by the time I got through high school, I was more or less accepted, I guess. [laughs] I remember Mrs. Fanny Wilson wrote me so many letters, and really encouraged me to stay at There were a number of people who came home because that year at
was the first year they had men -- boys -­ however you call them. And it was the biggest group of people they'd ever have come. And so they used part of the classrooms for bed -- for dormitories.
And I was supposed to be in a room. I had signed up
with Mary Bardel. And when I got there -- here I was up in this little attic room with these two girls I had no idea -- from Cisel County. [laughs] They just sort of looked at me. They had gone to high school together. And I couldn't find Mary, so
I was sitting out on the bench, and I expect I was a wee bit , and along came Mary, and she was
She was in the basement with girls from Baltimore City. [laughs]
B: Uh-oh.
MA: You know, we hadn't been very far from home. We didn't get to Bel Air very often, to begin with. So it was quite
B: You were only sixteen or seventeen, I guess, when you went to
MA: Yes.
B: So that is still quite young.
MA: Yes.
B: The first time you'd ever been away from home, right?
MA: Right. And I had this great big [laughs] big building. And now they teach all sorts
of things, and you see them sitting on the floors, and you see them smoking. We wouldn't dare to have smoked. We wouldn't dare to have dressed the way you're dressed. Or even combed our hair. [laughs] I said I would be tempted if I were teaching school, to pull the hair of teachers But they're not supposed to be helping you with your work anymore. Well, from the whole time I
taught. If a child cut his finger or something, you put iodine on it. Or if he was very sick, or we had a couple of children at Highland who were epileptics, so they had to have I got permission from their parents to give them one of those if they were going into a seizure. But now, of course, they have a nurse.
B: Right. And everybody is afraid of being sued if something goes wrong.
MA: Yes. [laughs] I never had the experience in an
Armory But something had
ran next door to get the neighbors to take the boy to the doctor. Or maybe we called the
doctor here. Dr. Sterving. We called came up. It was a broken leg.
him and he
B: Tell me more about the Highland community began teaching, or when you were growing was, of course, a farming community.
MA: Yes.
when you up. It
B: And, like you said, it was people with and the and the Galbraiths.
MA: Yes. [laughs]
the Wilsons
B: And so you were a newcomer from Baltimore and you felt like an outsider.
County,
MA: A.s.,d my father being a natural born citizen, and my
Ar•tOS 33
mother of course -- my mother and father -- mostly my mother they went down near the water near Baltimore and she met him -- her marriage was taken care of by her parents. I don't know. He must have been Polish. I remember the name Stefaninski. Because we all tease her about Stefaninski.
B: That was who she was supposed to marry?
MA: Yes. My grandfather was seriously hurt on the B&O Railroad, so they gave him a trip back to Germany to be with his family before he would die. So, of course, my mother went there, and he was this good­ looking fellow. He was sort of a ship's doctor.
But he was polishing the banisters when she first saw him, I think. But she fell very much in love with him. And he was twenty years older than she was.
B: Really?
MA: He was one year older than my grandmother.
B: Your father was twenty years older than your mother?
MA: Yes. So they came back and her father died, and she never married Stefaninski. She married my father instead.
B: That probably would not have been allowed had her
father not died.
AMOS 34
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
Oh, no.
She would have had to have married Stefaninski. Yes.
What was your father's first name? John. John Christian Hetzsch.
And that was the last name that you grew up with, and so you probably were ridiculed quite a bit as a young girl.
MA: That's right. [laughs]
[end of side one]
We became very friendly. At Christmastime I had a card from her, and the penmanship was real bad. I hadn't heard from her in some time. She said, "I had a bad operation, and I'm not in very good shape." So I found her telephone number and called her. And she said, "Hetzsch, let's get together in Bel Air." So last May, we met.
B: Really?
MA: Yes. Seventy-one years after we graduated. [laughs]
B: Seventy-one years later! Wow!
MA: And, of course, she is weak. She has somebody with her all the time. And I haven't heard from her
AMOS 35
since she went back. I thought last Saturday, "Well, I should call her." Maybe I'll do that this Saturday. But she has cancer pretty bad.
B: Had you started to attend the Highland Presbyterian Church fairly early -- the Highland Church?
MA: Well, we talked there to Sunday School, when we went to Sunday School. We didn't go every Sunday, of course. When I was in high school, I guess I went there
B: What do you remember about the church and the church community back then, in the 1930s -- 1930s, or whatever period you remember.
MA: Well, they were very stern. As somebody in the community says, "You can put a container with milk and cream in a vestibule, and you'll have ice cream when you get out." It was so cold. [laughs]
B: Oh! [laughs]
MA: But you didn't sit in anybody else's seat. You sat in certain places.
B: Everyone had their own seats in the sanctuary?
MA: Yes. Well, that's more or less true now. B: Pretty much.
MA: But I remember going one time when I was about
fourteen or fifteen, and I sat down in this seat and this lady came and said, "You are sitting in my
seat. Please move." And that hurt.
B: Oh, sure.
[laughs]
MA: Because we had one lady in the community that that was said to, she never did come back to Highland Church, because of that very thing. Louis Walter's wife. She contributes to the Fund on Louis' birthday and at Christmastime, I guess, every year. And she sends flowers in his memory. But, you know, he came so regularly.
B: She just couldn't bear to come back after that.
MA: No. And she never has forgiven them. I feel sorry because it's a bitterness in her, and she lives all alone, and both of her children were mentally
deficient, and the one And maybe you heard of Mr.
at the present time.
so much. And
because she appeared before the group that decided that the children would be going to Spring Grove, they came to me -- and his wife came to me before they started the school -- and we had them at Highland for a while, you know? But then, Mr.
Walter never really forgave Mr. Betting for appearing in -- well, I guess you'd say to protect the children, really, and to give them as much as they could. But then, both of them were sent back home again. And Gary has been there. But she
wouldn't let him do anything, and he got -- well, he was quite a beast before they took him back. But then, he drove a car and he came back one day. He had been to the to get some Cokes and
-- she was a great snacker. [laughs] And somebody had reported him. He didn't have a license, I guess. So that's when they took him.
And since then, he's been in Spring Grove. People were frightened of him because he walked around with a gun.
B: Oh!
MA: Yes, you'd imagine he was a soldier. And my great­ grandson is a great gun boy. So I don't know.
B: What pastor do you remember first from the Highland Church?
MA: Mr. Irving.
B: Reverend Irving?
MA: Yes. And then Mr. Price. We had the Literary Digest. that we had to read and give reports from. Some of our boys would write some very naughty things on that, and throw it over to the next. [laughs] And Mr. Irving would come over and give us a sermon. [laughs] I remember Kenneth Wilson was in that class. One of the There were just two of us from our class living now, and one is
Virginia Stewart, a cousin of to Inez, really. And she's good shape.
A sister not in very
B: When you're thinking back over your years as an educator, what stands out in your mind as accomplishments?
MA: Do you mean in the boys and girls I taught?
B: Yes. And how education was to education in those days. You watched all of your students become adults, because you've stayed in the community.
MA: Yes. Some of them did very well. One or two have been in jail. [laughs] One because he assaulted a
on the car was open, and his wife fell out. Well, she died as a result of it. You know, I taught grandchildren some of the first children I taught. So they had a respect for me, so they had a respect for -- I mean, the children had to have respect. I remember David coming up to me and patting me on the stomach and saying, "I
can tie my shoes now. [laughs]
B: [laughs]
I can come to school."
MA: Now they don't have to tie shoes. They just use velcro. [laughs]
B: Was that the test back then? If you could tie your
shoes, you could come to school?
MA: That's told me. [laughs] And I taught and Betty, and then I taught David and
B: Now, you've taught whole families. I know you taught all of my brothers and sisters.
MA: Yes.
B: We were a new family.
MA: You were newcomers. [laughs]
B: We were newcomers in 1946. Very new. [laughs]
MA: What happened to -- I think it was in Daisy
's room and Daisy and I went over to see your mother. I remember when they came down, they didn't need a bus. I guess they did come all the way down to the store.
B: Yes. My brothers did. We all walked down to Arnold's Store to catch the bus.
MA: Yes.
B: It was about a mile.
MA: Oh, I can't think of his name -- your oldest brother.
B: Martin.
MA: Martin. The black boys would throw stones at him.
And I don't know what he got into. I believe he was hurt. I think that's why Daisy and I took him home. And that's when I first met your grandmother and
your mother.
B: Oh, you met my grandmother? MA: Yes.
B: She was still living?
MA: Yes.
B: I never even knew my grandmother. She died before I was born.
MA: We kept waiting for the [laughs]
to have a girl.
B: Oh, really? [laughs] She finally did in 19952 -- my sister.
MA: And you've done so well -- all of you. B: Oh, thank you. [laughs]
MA: We just had the same books. I mean, we had to count all the books. I don't know whether they know how many books they have now. But now, if a book isn't published for a year or two -- well, it's no good.
B: Right.
MA: And they burn them.
B: Oh.
MA: I can't get over the burning books! [laughs] I remember one of the things at Highland, after we were in elementary school -- we had just so many things, I guess, in the library. We were our own librarians, of course. The Superintendent before
AMOS 41
Willis sent this lady up one summer to clean the library out -- to get it straightened out. And I remember Ted Johnson and the other custodian there talking about the bag of books. And they took a good many of them home. But one of the things that we since had started a collection of books from the community. And so they sort of started a community library. But some of those were valuable.
B: Yes.
MA: But she burned them. She had them burned. After Mr. Willis found out about that, he was quite upset. But there wasn't anything he could do about it.
B: She thought they were not appropriate for the school?
MA: Not up-to-date. Somebody had given us I don't know how many years of National Geographic. She burned all those.
B: She just took them down to the furnace, and threw them in?
MA: No, she had the custodians carry them, who had those
big barrels, back in the school, and threw them in there.
B: But they didn't burn them all. So they went through
some of them and kept them.
MA: They kept some of them.
AMOS 42
B: Well, good for Ted Johnson. [laughs]
MA: One of them, I remember, was the Preston's History of Harford County.
B: Oh.
MA: You know, I paid fifteen dollars for mine. [laughs] B: Now, why would she want to throw that out?
MA: Well, she was new to the county, I think. I don't know. Maybe the beginning of this urge. Some of the things that we have in the school now. [laughs] Because we wouldn't have advised our boys and girls to have dates in seventh grade. Or if they had problems, to come to them instead of going to their parents. Because if you thought they had a problem, you went to the parents and talked it over with them.
B: They don't do that anymore, do they?
MA: No. But parents are getting back into the school.
I don't know.
B: Schools are a lot different now. What else do you remember about the community -- the development of the Highland community? That is, the growth of the
community and some of the
MA: Well, they certainly have a lot more houses.
remember when they first built those houses. I
Mr.
Aames bought those houses. Karen Jones and
AMOS 43
There were three houses then.
B: Down on Heath Road.
MA: No. Right there on Street Road. They bought at the prune , and brought them up here and built them, and rented them. And that's where -- the house right there on the corner, across from the church -- where the Snyder's lived for so long
was built. Of course, the Snyder's were there for so long, and then Mrs. Snyder, who was always so good to my father, and he did part of her gardening for her he always took her flowers. She always remembered that. [laughs] Do you remember her parrot? Did we ever take you over?
B: Yes. So back in the twenties and thirties, there were only a few homes there in Highland, I guess.
MA: Yes.
B: Some of the original large victorian-type houses.
MA: Yes. Where the Heaths live now, and built that one where the Galbraiths live now. And
lived there for a while. But you just knew everybody. Now you don't. I don't know the people on Cherry Hill Road. And, of course, we used to when a new family moved in, we would go see them and take a cake or rolls or vegetables -- whatever.
Well, it's been about eight or ten years ago, I
AMOS 44
guess. When a new family moved in up here -- right above where is I took some vegetables and walked over there, and I rapped at the door. And finally a lady looked out her upstairs window and I told her I had come to see her and I brought these vegetables. She said, "Well, put them right down there. I'll get them when I come down. Goodbye." [laughs]
B: Oh!
MA: So I understood I wasn't I think that's the last home visit I made. I went up to where Carrie Allie used to live because she
whoever was living in her house. And so I did go up
there. And I went up there when Jean lived
there.
[laughs] Was it Jean ?
Ashton.
B: I don't remember.
MA: Vickers. Sandy Vickers. And there just isn't the feeling of closeness as there was. Although when we had our fire last year, we certainly couldn't have had more cooperation for the community from the fire companies all over Harford county. People just came and came. And when my husband died suddenly, they were very good. And when we built this house, Mr.
George Wilson and those men all came and helped out.
We had to cut the wood first. We cut the trees first, and then took the trees to the saw mill, and bring it back. So their faces were kind of curvy because the lumber is dried out. [laughs]
B: Oh! Built the house with green lumber! [laughs]
MA: You built the house right back on the same area where it was. It had been built, to begin with, by the man who was in charge of building the Rocks Road. What is his name?
B: Rocks Road or Rocks Station? MA: Rocks Road.
B:
MA:
That must have been a long time ago.
Yes. I can't think of their names. Some of the labor from Sweden -- and they had eight and nine foot ceilings. And this whole side was the living room. I remember the dining room was back in this area. And then just a small kitchen in the back. Oh, the kitchen wasn't so small. We had a stove. We could still cook by the old [laughs] And then I had gotten the stove, and that's what caused the fire. came in, and there was a leak, evidently. It just went up. I was at summer school. [laughs]
B: And your whole house burned down? MA: Yes. Completely.
B:
MA:
What year was that? 1942.
B: Oh. So you had to come back and build a house in war-time, when it was difficult to get lumber.
MA: Yes. That's why we couldn't get lumber, and couldn't get labor, either. And it took a long while to get the house built. That little house
I don't know whether you noticed it -- when you came past 's. They had been using it to put
in, and we were the first one -- one mothers and the other mothers had it with the two boys. [laughs] So Charlie Glasgow said, "I'll clean that at the feet house, and you can move there." So we did. And it was -- well, not as big as this now, but I remember to the floor.
B: Oh.
MA: But we just had the one bedroom. we just had two rooms.
B: And you stayed there until your
MA: When the barn burned last year, that was just fifty years and one day after the house had burned.
B: Fifty years and one day.
MA: The house went down July 8th and the barn went down July 9th. And just a year before that, the Davis' house had burned, right over here.
AMOS 47
B:
MA:
I don't even remember that.
You see, it was a nice big house. They had
housing beside them, where they lived. And I guess they never did build until Jack got married. His mother died in that little house.
B: When did the Nimnows move here? Were they new, too?
MA: No. The Laddins moved here, and Tommy Nimnow was a nephew of them. So they moved back in the 1800s. I don't know how Tommy met Isabel because she was from
the South, and she was teaching in somehow they met.
B: She still has somewhat of an accent.
MA: And I hear her telling once in a while she was a strict Baptist, and Mrs. Laddin insisted on her being married in the Episcopal Church up here -­ Holy Cross. [laughs]
B: Oh.
But
MA: So every once in a while she still talks about that.
Well, once in a while Now since they've got different hymn books, you know, the Episcopalians have changed, too. Just like the Presbyterians have. [laughs] have their new minister. Their other minister just left --
of this year.
B: Slate Ridge?
AMOS 48
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
Yes.
Well, wasn't Henry Heaves over there? Yes. He was the interim there.
He was the interim? So they have a new pastor now? Yes. So I don't know what we're doing. [laughs]
B: At Highland, are they still looking for a new pastor there?
MA: Yes.
B: Have they started interviewing?
MA: I don't think they started interviewing. I think
they're still reading They're relying on
the committee, and I guess it takes a long while to get twenty dossiers around to all nine. [laughs]
B: Right.
MA: But
on Sunday to pray for them. They need a
lot of prayers. And they would be starting to interview soon. So I took from that that they hadn't interviewed anybody yet. But the Presbyterians will be pretty strict on them, too. Of course, some of us don't have very good feeling toward the Presbyterians. [laughs]
B: Without changing the subject, tell me about farming here on your farm, back when you first got married.
MA: Well, when we first got married, this was all pine trees here.
B:
MA: Oh, it
Yes. was?
B: So you had to clear it?
MA: We had one cow and two horses.
B: Oh, really?
MA: Yes. And down near the woods there was a log cabin, which had been built. And that's where we kept our animals. There were two houses here. In fact, this place was two places. [laughs] Fishers and who owned the other one? Well, anyway, Nelson's cousin bought the two places, and we bought it from him.
But we had to cut a lot of pine trees. We had to do a lot to get it. [laughs] It's quite different
even since .Nelson's been gone, we've
And, of course, he wouldn't have thought of having corn and hay on another two or three different farms, like we do now. [laughs]
B: And your son continues to farm the place pretty much?
MA: Yes.
B: And how many acres are you farming crops? MA:
B: You don't have a dairy herd anymore, do you?
MA: Yes.
B: You do?
MA:
B:
MA:
About a hundred a day. Oh, really?
Yes. Yes, Julie and Matt take care of that mostly. bud helps out. But it keeps Bud busy repairing machinery. [laughs]
B: That's right. Julie takes care of the herds. MA: Yes. Keeps all the records.
B: And then Nelson takes care of the fields? MA: Yes.
B: And I guess you grow your own corn for the cows?
MA: Yes. But we don't grow soybean. We just do the corn and the hay.
B: So there's still a good-working farm here.
MA: Yes. It's better
been fertilized and manured.
[ laughs] It's [laughs]
B: When you first came here, did you plow the fields with your horses?
MA: Yes.
B: That would have been in the thirties?
MA: Yes. We came over here in 1931, when Edward James Nelson was born. Even my father-in-law said, "Up there in the wilderness." [laughs] And I remember Nelson was so sick, and I called Dr. Arthur. We didn't have a telephone, even when the house burned. Anyway, I got word to Dr. Arthur and he came down,
and he told me how sick Nelson was. Then he said, "I'd rather be buried back here." [laughs]
B: I guess it was pretty remote back then. [laughs] MA: But then I had my mother down over the , and my mother-in-law down below. [laughs] Well,
families were closer together. Families did things for each other.
B: Right.
MA: is doing a history, where she's having each one of the families -- the nine families
-- to write-up what they have done, and some interesting things. It's so interesting. Marsha brought me her copy, while been sitting around, reading. [laughs] I told her there ought to be a copy of them in the library. And in the archives, by all means. But all the families
hadn't written about them. families.
about their own
B: Which nine families? Do you mean the Heitzes and the Wilsons, or which families?
MA: The Wilsons. The one family of Wilsons. I guess his father's name was George. And then the oldest son who lives where Kathryn is now, was George.
George and John. And he married one of the Schuster girls, and they didn't name him George. Yes, they
did. Their first boy was George. He lives in Florida now. But they take their names
Do you have Elizabeth Stevens on your list?
B: No. I don't think so.
MA: They lived where the Galbraiths do now. And she talks about walking over to fields to go to -- oh, what was the schoolhouse they just tore down?
B: Right on Greer Nursery Road? MA: Yes.
B: Is that what it was called?
MA: Yes. Eleanor Morris has a picture of it. Her parents had gone there, too. The great big houses are gone up there now.
B: I know. They're really big. You wonder who is going to live there.
MA: I wonder. And, of course, they won't be living there very long before they have their first
B: That's right! It seems to be that way. Right.
MA: It is. Like across from where Jack used to live. There are just so many houses back in that area.
B: Well, I think we have to sum-up now. Do you have
any little stories to tell? Any anecdotes that you would like to tell? Or do you want to sum-up your
career? Your life in Highland?
MA: It's been very interesting. There have been some hard times, some sad times. But some good times. And they've been very good to me. [laughs] Last year Susan Eiler did a history on me -- I'll let you read that. [laughs]
B: Oh!
MA: She has some of the things not quite straight, but anyway. As a seventh grader, I thought it was a good little thing. So I right after Dorothy Ford sent me this clipping. I thought, "Oh, I'll get it."
B: So you were Harford County's first home teacher, you said.
MA: Yes. That was during that time when I wasn't teaching at Highland.
B: Because you had gone home to have your first child. MA: Yes.
B: And you taught Howard Bush, you said.
MA: Yes. The family still lives there. You know, they started to build a house, and they've never built anymore than the first layer. [laughs]
B: Oh! Along 165?
MA: Yes. What is that name? Since then I taught his aunt. Well, anyway --
AMOS 54
B:
MA:
B:
So you were saying you taught a black student who -­ Had a white mother.
Had a white mother, and said the black schools would not accept him and the white schools would not. And Juitsville would not accept him because he was black.
MA: Yes.
B: So you taught him at home for how long?
MA: Two years. He didn't especially want to come back. He got the itch there one time. [laughs] I started teaching right after I had come from the hospital for a while -- teaching him. I was going back for check-ups, and I had this terrible itching on my arms, and one of the young doctors were very upset about what it was because I had so many infections, and one thing or another. And this older doctor came in and said, "Hell, she's got The Itch." [laughs]
B: "She's got The Itch?"
MA: Yes. These little things
B: Maybe you had the Shingles, or something like that.
MA: No. I got off the table soon. [laughs] The didn't want to come to school
She had to call him every time to get him in. And he didn't do his work very well. But I met his wife
AMOS 55
afterwards. I guess that was in the hospital. I'd meet so many people in the hospital. And he had been killed in an accident. Richard Keila.
B: Who was this -- your home teaching student? MA: Yes. He had sort of a reputation. [laughs]
She never went to school. She was sick, and one thing or another. So she had home teaching. And then she had three boys, and I think they had home teaching. [laughs] They didn't
accounting, more or less. But they had a wonderful garden. I'm surprised at how much they do, and evidently, they get quite a big sum when
built a house. But they much. [laughs]
B: You like to garden, too, don't you? MA: Yes.
B: Do you still have a garden every summer? MA: Well, I don't have one this summer.
B: No.
MA: [laughs] Just keeping me out of it. I've been wanting to pull some weeds, but I just can't get down and stoop so much. I don't want to fall down. I don't mind dying in the garden, but
[laughs]
B: You don't want a broken arm in the garden! [laughs]
I
l
AMOS 56
MA: [laughs]
B: This interview is just about over. This tape is just about done. I just want to thank you for your time. It's been fun.
MA: Well, I've enjoyed it.
End of Interview

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Transcript

Interview with Marie Hetzsch Amos, by Bowers, Harford County Library, July 1, 1994.
BOWERS:
ALLEN:
This is Bowers, and I'm sitting with Marie
H. Amos, a well-known and respected educator, perhaps best remembered as Principal of Highland Elementary School, and now many years retired. And I think widely considered a matriarch of the Highland community. Marie, let's go way back to the beginning so we can get to know Marie Amos. Where were your born, and who were your parents?
My mother was Mary Pauline My father was John Christian Hetzsch. He got his citizenship here. They both came from Germany.
B: I don't think I've ever seen that name.
MA: Well, you haven't been down to the graveyard. [laughs] And that was out on -- well, I guess it's still called Bel Air Road in Baltimore County. And I was the oldest of the three girls.
B: And that's where you lived. Where was that now? MA: I forget the name. It was on Bel Air Road.
B: In Harford County?
MA: No, in Baltimore County. B: That's where you were born?
MA: Yes.
B: What was the year? MA: 1904.
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
So you were born in Baltimore County, and you grew up there until what age?
I was fourteen when I came up here.
And your parents and your whole family moved here? Yes.
And came to the Highland community at that time? Yes. just a mile down the road. [laughs] Your parents bought a farm?
No. They had a garden. My father was a great garden for this man, and they just lived in -- I guess you'd call it a peasant house.
What was the name of the road? Green Nursery. [laughs]
B: On Green Nursery Road. Okay.
MA: Of course, it didn't have a name then. There's a picture of station, you see?
B: Oh, right beside the Station? MA: Yes.
B: Is the house still there that you grew up in? MA: Yes. I walked every day to Highland.
B: You walked from there to Highland Elementary School, as a student?
MA: Except the day when it was storming or something.
Then we went on the train. [laughs] And we didn't get there, of course, until about ten o'clock.
B: Because the train was very slow and it made a lot of stops?
MA: Yes. Well, it only had the one stop to make from here to Highland Street. A couple of they called a street, I guess.
B: So you were one of Highland's early students, I guess. You were born in 1904, and the school was built in 1909, I think.
MA: 1907.
B: And so you started school in what year? MA: 1914 until 1918, I guess.
B: You started to go to Highland in 1918?
MA: Well, before I went to Highland, I went to Cherry Hill -- the other direction. We're just halfway between the two. And it was a one-room school.
B: Oh, I see.
MA: I had been going to a school in Baltimore County, where the boys went in one door, and the girls went in another door. [laughs]
B: Oh, really!
MA: And we went home for lunch. We could go home for lunch. Well, there were five sections. I was in the fifth grade, and there were five sections. I came up here to this one-room school, where there were the little six-year-olds, as well, I guess --
some of the boys were eighteen. [laughs] So I had quite a time. I cried and cried.
B: Oh!
MA: Especially when the teacher would play "Home, Sweet Home." [laughs]
B: You were homesick. [laughs] So your first school then, was a one-room schoolhouse at Cherry Hill?
MA: Yes. And I've been trying to find out when it was built, but I know it was there -- my teacher that I had there at that one-room schoolhouse just died last April.
B: Oh, who was that?
MA: She was a hundred. Mary Berkins. B: Mary Berkins was your teacher?
MA: Yes.
B: And that school was located on Cherry Hill Road? MA: Yes.
B: Whereabouts?
MA: Well, at least a mile in from where Cherry Hill and Green Nursery cross.
B: Okay. So it's
MA: We had to walk down to Green Nursery Road with our bucket, to get our water, to drink. [laughs] And that was another thing, except we had
We all drank out of that sink. [laughs]
B:
MA:
Did that bother you? [laughs]
And carrying my lunch bothered me because I was used to running home.
B: So it was different from Baltimore County. MA: Yes.
B: Quite different. You had to be a certain age to begin at Highland then.
MA: I don't know how I decided to go to Highland. Well, a lot of people went when they were in the seventh grade, so they'd sort of be used to it before they went into high school. So I guess maybe that was
B: Okay. So you started at Highland then, you think, around 1918?
MA: Yes.
B: And you would have been fourteen years old. MA: Yes.
B: What do you remember from your early days at that Cherry Hill school? Do you remember any of your classmates, and what were the conditions there?
You've already said that there was no running water there. You had to go out and pump your drinking water.
MA: Yes. And we had a little outhouse out behind. One
side for the boys and one side for the girls.
[laughs] And we had our wood pile out there, and the boys usually brought in the wood. But we had the big pot belly stove. Oh, we had recess at that time -- fifteen minutes -- and we had an hour for lunch. And in an hour for lunch, we would go down over the hill, and we had these tremendous grape vines, and we would just swing back and forth on these grape vines. [laughs] I remember one time I went to hear Billy Sunday, and she left one of the older girls in charge. And we weren't very good.
B: Oh-oh. [laughs]
MA: In fact, we went out and had a mud battle. [laughs] so we had several days of sitting in for our lunch periods and our recess periods, and I will not bear false witnesses. [laughs]
B: Who was Billy Sunday? MA: One of the evangelists.
B: What about some of your classmates there? Who do you remember? Some of the people who still live around here?
MA: Well, Glenn , who is at the Bel Air Nursing
Home, is still living. All my sister-in-laws went there. Of course, they live right there at the bottom of the hill. Let's see who else is living. I guess there aren't any, because my sister-in-law
died, my sister died.
B: That was a long time ago. MA: Yes.
B: So you came up to Highland. What do you remember from your first year or two there? What was that like, going to the big school?
MA: They just had two grades in one room, and Mrs.
Pauline Bay was my teacher. She was Pauline Wilson at that time. And Charles Gladen has told me since then, that before school started she said, "Now, there's a new girl coming to our room, and she has a name quite different from anything you've ever heard." [laughs]
B: [laughs]
MA: And we lined up front and marched, and Curtis Famous
-- Dr. Famous' son -- made a little drum for us to march in by. [laughs]
B: Really? Because you were new students? MA: No. We did that every morning.
B: Oh!
MA: She had us march in. B: Oh, I see.
MA: And we went to our places and sat, and we had the scripture reading, and the village prayer, as a rule, before school started. Of course, she taught
one grade and then the other. The others had study periods, I guess you called them, where we wrote notes. [laughs] The thing I remember about Cherry Hill School -- oh, that first, second or third day I was there, I was sitting in front of Glenn
it happened to be, and I had two pigtails, and he put them in the ink well! [laughs]
B: Really! [laughs] Those things really did happen!
MA: Yes!
B: At Highland, what was the average day like there?
Was it a six hour day?
MA: We started at nine, until four. I guess you could call it six hours. And we had -- in the afternoons, we went to the little room right behind it.
Highland had the two rooms in front and one in back at that time. And after two-thirty, the younger children -- the first and second grade -- were
dismissed for
and they walked home. And we went over there, and Mrs. taught
She was Mrs. after that. And
we had recess periods. We'd run down, over the hill over near where William lived, where
the grange hall was. That was a wonderful picket fence! [laughs]
B: Oh, really?
AMOS 9
MA:
And sometimes we'd be a little bit late coming back, and so we'd have to stay after school. And that was still true when I started to teach at Highland. And I remember Palmer Hawkins and Charles Hawkins. They brought me picket fence so I wouldn't keep them after school. [laughs]
B: Is that right?
MA: There aren't any picket fences around here anymore, now.
B: We have them at our farm. MA: Oh, really?
B: Yes. Quite a few. MA: Good.
B: Oh, well, I'll bring you some next time.
MA: I'll have to bring my to pick them. B: Well, they'd be welcome. Now, you stayed at
Highland, then, from 1918 to -- MA: 1921.
B: So you would have graduated from there from high school. You finished eleventh grade there.
MA: Yes.
B: Then you decided to go on to State.
MA: Yes. We packed our trunks. We knew we weren't
going to get home until Thanksgiving.
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
That was a long drive back then. Yes.
The road were quite different then. Yes, they were. But we went on the Railroad.
Oh, you did? You were able to take the train? Yes.
B:
MA:
How nice!
[laughs]
that group, and then Sara Webster and
Mary Barlow -- there was six of us who went from Highland that year. When we'd get to the Hyde Station, the man would come in and yell, and we'd hide down behind the [laughs] Oh, we had a lot of fun.
B: So were you all going to study education, and to become teachers?
MA: That was all we did at that time. It was just for
teacher training.
B: That's right. It was a teacher's school. MA: Yes.
B: When did you decide to become a teacher, and what
led to your decision?
MA: Well, when I first graduated from high school I wanted to be a nurse. And so I registered, but I wasn't old enough to enter. I mean, you had to
eighteen. So I went to
B: So that was the only determination? Really? MA: Yes.
B: What a disappointment. You really wanted to be a nurse. [laughs]
MA: Well, teachers I had. Especially Mrs.
I don't remember any of the teachers I had in Baltimore County. But I remember Mary Berkins and Pauline Bay.
B: Oh, that's interesting. Elementary school teachers are more important than college instructors. [laughs]
MA: [laughs]
B: So you came back from
was it? A four year program?
after -- what
MA: No, two years. And in between that time we had a group -- two, I guess -- missionaries from India, who talked to us, and I got so involved I was going to go right to -- I did sign up with
[laughs]
B:
MA:
Really?
Miss was the Principal, and she called in and she said, "Don't you remember that you signed the paper that you were teaching in Maryland for two years? So you cannot go as missionary to India!"
So that was the end of my missionary project. [laughs] Except I keep up with Pauline.
B: I keep up with my sister. Tell me about your first years of teaching.
MA: Well, the first year I lost nine pounds in two weeks. [laughs]
B: Now,
MA: Yes.
those
why was that? Was it that stressful?
I had fourth grade to the ninth grade. And ninth graders were supposed to be ready to go
to Bel Air in the fifth grade. So I had to teach
their subjects. So I wonder what I did with the
fourth graders. [laughs] Of course, they helped
out with the fourth graders. Oh, we had our
Christmas programs there. We had to walk two miles
to practice for our graduation, down at the
would
Station. And, of course, that's where they have to go to meet the train to come back to
Bel Air. And one of my people just died just
recently.
Scarp. She's a sister-in-law of
Oh, what was her first name? And
every once in a while -- especially when I'm down at
the hospital, where I've been so many times lately -
- somebody comes in and says, "Do you remember when
you taught me at Youth Benefit?"
AMOS 13
B:
MA:
Youth Benefit? You taught there? Yes. It was a two-room school then.
B: Oh, I see.
MA: And it was on Pleasantville Road. It wasn't quite where the Youth Benefit is now. But there was a family -- the Preston family -- Preston's parents -- who lived on Pleasantville Road a little later, and the older sister of , and in fact, they took me along for -- when we went to Bel Air it was every Wednesday night, I guess it was and signed. And I remember Mr. Preston always
said -- he insisted -- that there would be a high school in that area. That was way back there, in 1925.
B: In Bel Air?
MA: At Youth Benefit. There were schools every two miles. There was another two-room school in
, and the next one was Youth Benefit, and the next one was two miles up the [laughs] And what was the next school? It was right on the
County Line?
B: Near Lake Hall?
MA: No. Webster at Youth Benefit. And two miles down the road the other way -- on Pleasantville Road -- taught. And
AMOS 14
I've been trying to think of the name of that school, where she taught. The boys had gone there.
B: There were schools every two miles? MA: Yes.
B: And that was how they were built. And these were all the one-room schoolhouses.
MA: Most of them were two-rooms.
B: So that all the children in the communities would basically walk to these schools.
MA: Yes. And bring their lunch. And we had the stoves, and I always had such a time getting the fire started. [laughs] The Amos' happened to be -- what's the name of that road? well, anyway, we had about a quarter of a mile to walk to school.
And the teacher who taught the and I roomed together at the same house, and we ate together. I remember sometimes we thought we didn't have enough to eat, and we bought hot dogs at the store, and put them down the lamps. You know, we had lamps then. We didn't have electricity.
B: What do you mean you put them down the lamps? To heat them up?
MA: Yes. [laughs] We had a chimney
know, she'd know. She couldn't help but know because it was off the side of the
You
AMOS 15
building. [laughs] Anyway, I still hear from here. She's still down at a nursing home in North Carolina. She's an aunt to Mrs. Earle Beatty. She was Virginia Copenhaver.
B: Copenhaver. There's a Copenhaver Road.
MA: Yes.
B:
MA:
Is that the family?
That's right. Same family. And Miss was our supervisor. And I remember going to have her hair cut. So I cut it. Imagine me cutting her hair. You see how brave I was!? [laughs] So I cut her hair. And Miss came in, and she looked at me and she said, "I am ashamed of you. I am disappointed in you." She looked like a greased pig. [laughs] Of course, we weren't supposed to wear any make-up of any kind. Mr. Wright was our Superintendent, and we had a meeting at the beginning of school. All the teachers had to be there. Some of them would play hooky and go to the state fair, but he called the role. And he always said scripture, and I remember he always said, "Judge not that you be in that judged." [laughs]
He tried to impress us with the fact that all the children were coming to us to talk. And then he always gave this little talk about no make-up and no
AMOS 16
hair down their back. be quite an example.
B: Right.
[laughs] We were supposed to
MA: More than today, I believe.
B: Well, was that difficult? Because you were all still fairly young.
MA: Yes. And we had the same sort of thing at
We couldn't go to breakfast down our back. And we weren't supposed to cut our hair or wear any make­ up. And we had grace at the table.
B: So when you cut your colleague's hair, you bobbed her hair.
MA: Yes.
B: And that was very -- you just weren't supposed to do that.
MA: No.
B: You were supposed to have long hair, up in a bun, or up on your head.
MA: That's right. And another thing that I did that I wonder why, because now I can hardly a nail. There was a little organ there that just sat in the corner. It couldn't be used at all.
B:
MA:
B:
Where was this?
And so I made a bookcase [laughs] You made a bookcase out of the wood from the organ?
MA: From the organ. [laughs]
B: Now, did you get in trouble for that?
MA: No, no. I don't think I was complimented.
B: This organ wasn't being used anymore, was it? [laughs]
MA: I don't know. I suppose somebody had given the organ at one time. complaints about it. And, of course, we didn't have PTA. But we did have Christmas, I guess. And maybe Thanksgiving.
B: Was Youth Benefit the first place you taught? MA: Yes.
B: So you went right there. And that would have been in the 1920s.
MA: 1923. I was there from 1923 to 1925, and then I went over to Chestnut Hill. Because Mr. Wright said
-- they had four teachers the year before. [laughs] And he sent me there to be sure that we had
And we did.
B: Violet Merryman taught there for a while.
MA: Yes. A good many years. Violet Merryman was born the day I graduated from Highland. [laughs]
B: Oh, really! So you were at Chestnut Hill first! MA: That's right. [laughs] And both of my sisters-in­
law taught there. And Grace Gilbert taught there.
And Mary Jones. Other folks from because it was easy to get to. I guess they the wintertime. right down the bottom of the hill from school, and I remember sledding home from
school.
B: Really?
[laughs]
MA: And the lady with whom we boarded even packed their lunch. So then she became ill, and we had to well, we lived right beside the school, where they had two little children, who we had to help take
care of. [laughs]
B: Oh. So you were really busy. MA: Yes.
B: Youth Benefit, which is maybe fifteen or twenty
miles from here, and would have been from your parents' house, was probably difficult to get to, back in the 1920s.
MA: Oh, yes. I went on the Railroad, down to
Falston. Well, met me there. But there was a friend there, too. Well, she was a sister of my teacher at the one-room school. And she would take me on up to my boarding place.
B: By car?
MA: By car. A little old Ford.
B: So it may have taken forty-five minutes or an hour
to get to Falston from here.
MA: Oh, yes.
B: So that was why you boarded. MA: Yes.
B: You could not make that trip in the morning -- every morning -- especially in the wintertime, with snow.
MA: Oh, no. No, we didn't even come home every weekend. B: You didn't?
MA: No.
B: So you boarded with a colleague because it was a two-room school, and so you had one other woman teaching there.
MA: Yes.
B: What was her name? MA: Virginia Kopenhaver.
B: That's right. Virginia Kopenhaver. Now, you boarded together.
MA: And roomed together. We did everything together. [laughs] One afternoon we were out walking, and the people who lived across from us had this beautiful field of turnips, and we used to turnips. [laughs] Well, I guess we got several turnips. But that was quite a joke about it -- he kept getting the turnips.
B: Did you cook them?
MA: No, we ate them raw.
B: You ate them raw? Oh, my. Yes, that is brave. So
you were at Youth Benefit for two years, you said.
MA: Yes.
B: And then you went to Chestnut Hill.
MA: And I was there just the one year, and then I came to Highland. And you know, in those days, when the Superintendent would select you, but then the Trustees of the school -- you had to see each one of those to see if they approved of his appointment.
So I remember Dr. Famous was one of them, and Mr.
D.G. Harry, and Gladen , right over here. Having an interview with him is [laughs] And when I got a scholarship at Patterson, I had to go meet the several people, and then I had to pay it back, of course. [laughs] Oh, Mr. Wright when he hired me for Youth Benefit --
B: C. Milton Wright?
MA: Yes. He would see that I was getting twenty-five dollars a week, and a dollar a month to sweep the floors and keep the fires clean. [laughs] He said, "You know, that's very good salary. That's more than many secretaries are being paid." [laughs] So I got about eight hundred dollars a year that first year. I wasn't getting much more than that when I
came to Highland. I guess about a thousand dollars a year, when I came to Highland, and then I just had the two grades -- sixth and seventh. And I taught them then until 1931, when James Nelson was born.
And then I didn't teach for ten years, except to substitute. Sometimes I substituted all the time. I remember taking James Nelson more than one time. He was very good about sitting there in the chair. And, of course, the children helped take care of him. [laughs] But then we came home and he wanted to play, and I said, "Well, I have so much to do, and I can't. You can go play by yourself." He said, "You didn't do a thing but talk all day!" [laughs]
B: "So why should you be tired, Mom?" MA: Yes!
B: What do you remember from your early days of teaching at Highland?
MA: We had such good support from the parents. This one wasn't like it is. I mean, they seemed to know they had to do what they did. Fortunately we had someone who came in, and she could [laughs] Wilbur tells the story about sitting there and throwing salt. We always had the picture of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln
Most pieces of chalk behind the picture without getting [laughs]
B: At Highland, how many students were there? And how many grades when you started?
MA: All eleven grades were there then. B: One through eleven?
MA: Yes. No kindergarten or preschool.
B: Was that before or after they made the addition to the school?
MA: Well, the addition was made -- I'll have to look in my book -- let's see. When I taught there it was just the two rooms in front and the one room in back. In 1957 they added the four rooms in the back.
B: So when you started there it was just the four rooms.
MA: Yes. There was just three rooms downstairs and three rooms upstairs. And in the basement, next to where the pump room was, it was where they taught the chemistry. We didn't have Phys. Ed., I guess. Yes, we did. Because we had a basketball team that won the championship for the school. [laughs]
B: Oh, really?
MA: Yes. was sort of in charge of that. B: So you taught grades six and seven?
AMOS 23
MA: Yes. And then after 1941 and 1942, when Miss Fisher, who was supervisor then, came and said that they needed another teacher at Dublin, and she wondered if I would take it. It was first grade.
Miss had always told me I could teach anything except sixth and seventh grade, because I was so stern. [laughs] But anyway, I had been in the hospital for six weeks. Anyway, I called the doctor, and he said I could try to go. So that was war-time, of course. My husband took me over as far as to the little church. I mean, it was a schoolhouse then. Schoolhouse. And then I got on the school bus and went to Dublin.
B: Route 40, back up to Dublin.
MA: 440. And then in the afternoon, I had to be ready to leave when the bus left. So I'd come back there, and then my husband would meet me there. And I remember we stopped at the store at that time, and I got an ice cream cone every afternoon.
B: Every afternoon?
MA: Yes. Mary Jones said to me one time, "You keep eating those ice cream cones and you'll gain weight galore!" [laughs] So I did. [laughs] When I taught at Dublin, the high school teachers went in one door. was one of those teachers.
AMOS 24
B:
MA:
Oh, really?
Yes. And we went in the door that was a little bit lower. We weren't supposed to go up the high school door. Mr. Hannah was the Principal there then.
B: Miles Hannah? MA: Yes.
B: I didn't know you were at Dublin. How long were you there?
MA: I was there from September -- well, when I went there, I went with my basket of things for little first graders, you know? And I had a fourth grade. It was over the top of the furnace room, so it was pretty warm. And one of my pupils at that time was Dr. Hank. You know, it was up at the Children's Center. They came over there and started -- would start to say the prayer. Well, anyway, I had fourth grade. So that was quite a surprise. [laughs]
B: So you were expecting to teach first, and instead you were teaching fourth.
MA: Yes. And then -- I guess it was about January of
that year -- of course, as soon as you became pregnant, you reported that and you didn't teach anymore. Of course, before that, when you were married, you couldn't teach anymore. But for this time, it was when you became pregnant. And the
teacher in the second grade at Highland became pregnant. So I asked Mr. Wright about coming back there because of the trouble I was having with transportation, and getting enough gas to even be left by my husband. [laughs] He was so good to me. He took me all these places. I drove on our honeymoon, and I drove for a month or two after that. And then the gas thing started, and I went up the back, and turned the car upside down. So my mother was on one side of the hill, my mother-in-law was on the other side of the hill, and between the two of them, they persuaded my husband I wasn't to drive anymore. So I didn't.
B: Wow!
MA: I drove a tractor after we came up here on the farm. B: So you were at Dublin for how long?
MA: From September to January.
B: And then you came back to Highland?
MA: Yes. I came back to Highland in the second grade. So I taught. That was Inez She was Inez Stuart. She's still living, but not in the community. She's in a retirement home up in Pennsylvania. She is a cousin of Pearl Lawors. And
because their mothers and their fathers
-- their mothers were sisters and their fathers were
brothers. [laughs] That's like the Wilson family. They all married Schuster girls. [laughs]
B: So when you came back to Highland, you stayed at Highland then, after that?
MA: Yes.
B: And that's where you had your longest teaching career.
MA: Yes.
B: How many years? Thirty-some? MA: I don't know. It was from 1942.
B: This newspaper clipping says you were a teaching at Highland for twenty-two years, and then served as Principal for seventeen of those years.
MA: Well, when the high school moved up to
day. [laughs] Miss Fisher came along, and asked me if I would keep the roll books. As I understood, she was the Principal of the schools, like they do in Pennsylvania. And then we would serve under her. Well, instead of that , and I had the second grade, and they moved it up to -- do you remember that little room that's right off the steps?
B: Yes. Right.
MA: Well, that's where I had my desk. B: Yes, I remember.
MA: When I finally got a telephone. But I often taught my reading class right there.
B: Oh, really? In that small office?
MA: Yes. And that year I had fifty in the second grade. B: Oh!
11A: I remember Ruth Ann Cruit, when she came. Children looked up and they said, "Oh, not another one!" [laughs]
B: Fifty students?
MA: Yes.
B: Were they split in two classes?
MA: No. You put them in groups according to their reading groups.
B: Oh, I see.
MA: And math. But when I went back to Highland, in Inez' place -- do you remember when we had the petitions under where we kept the coats and hats?
B: Yes.
MA: Well, there was a little boy that you had to watch when he had to go to the bathroom, and he had a little pan back there, and you took it back there. [laughs] I don't know whatever happened to him.
But we had mainstream, like we have now. We had the children who were crippled or of that sort, as well as the other children who didn't have much mental
You just gave him something to do, and watched him. The children were just better in those days. [laughs] I remember Eunice Harry. We did so well when she had her first May Day,
were in charge, and we went to different schools to see the May Days, and Eunice would take care of that second grade. I remember I taught the seniors, who were to do a Russian dance right outside the window. So Eunice was inside the plant. [laughs] And, of course, they're right next to the
interesting. Hr. Cruke had such a big
that he'd be teaching them this Russian dance.
B: May Days were an annual tradition at Highland for many years.
MA: Many years.
B: I remember participating in May Day. All I can remember doing was dancing around the May Pole.
MA: [laughs]
B: What do you remember as significant changes in education over the years at Highland'?
MA: Well, when I was a teacher, I still would like to have my own teaching because they could do the music. I didn't do very well in music. But along with the reading -- now they go through so many different places. They go someplace for
AMOS 29
reading, they go some place for Phys. Ed. [laughs] And I don't know whether I really think the children get confused moving from one personality to another, besides walking up the hallways of and hear I saw one group going into music, and another group was going to the library. And they were doing pretty well.
Once in a while one would punch another one. [laughs]
B: So you think all the moving about is distracting?
MA: Yes.
B: And that having one teacher provides them with a greater leadership and role -- someone to look up to?
MA: Yes. Of course, it makes a different world they're going into. They're not as protective as they were, I think.
B: Tell me about the Highland community at large. What
was the community like in the 1920s and 1930s?
MA: If you weren't a Heaps or a Wilson or a , you weren't much. [laughs] And you were just sort of accepted. Then, after I went to high school -­ well, I was valedictorian because I wasn't one of them. I wasn't allowed to make a speech. I mean, I didn't.
AMOS 30
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
Is that right?
Yes.
That's very interesting.
And after I taught there, there was some sort of a contest -- county contest. It was a composition that they were supposed to write. And the one that I chose out of the sixth and seventh grade class wasn't one of the group. And I remember the one lady came to me and said, "You know that we can't have her represent Highland." But then by the time I got through high school, I was more or less accepted, I guess. [laughs] I remember Mrs. Fanny Wilson wrote me so many letters, and really encouraged me to stay at There were a number of people who came home because that year at
was the first year they had men -- boys -­ however you call them. And it was the biggest group of people they'd ever have come. And so they used part of the classrooms for bed -- for dormitories.
And I was supposed to be in a room. I had signed up
with Mary Bardel. And when I got there -- here I was up in this little attic room with these two girls I had no idea -- from Cisel County. [laughs] They just sort of looked at me. They had gone to high school together. And I couldn't find Mary, so
I was sitting out on the bench, and I expect I was a wee bit , and along came Mary, and she was
She was in the basement with girls from Baltimore City. [laughs]
B: Uh-oh.
MA: You know, we hadn't been very far from home. We didn't get to Bel Air very often, to begin with. So it was quite
B: You were only sixteen or seventeen, I guess, when you went to
MA: Yes.
B: So that is still quite young.
MA: Yes.
B: The first time you'd ever been away from home, right?
MA: Right. And I had this great big [laughs] big building. And now they teach all sorts
of things, and you see them sitting on the floors, and you see them smoking. We wouldn't dare to have smoked. We wouldn't dare to have dressed the way you're dressed. Or even combed our hair. [laughs] I said I would be tempted if I were teaching school, to pull the hair of teachers But they're not supposed to be helping you with your work anymore. Well, from the whole time I
taught. If a child cut his finger or something, you put iodine on it. Or if he was very sick, or we had a couple of children at Highland who were epileptics, so they had to have I got permission from their parents to give them one of those if they were going into a seizure. But now, of course, they have a nurse.
B: Right. And everybody is afraid of being sued if something goes wrong.
MA: Yes. [laughs] I never had the experience in an
Armory But something had
ran next door to get the neighbors to take the boy to the doctor. Or maybe we called the
doctor here. Dr. Sterving. We called came up. It was a broken leg.
him and he
B: Tell me more about the Highland community began teaching, or when you were growing was, of course, a farming community.
MA: Yes.
when you up. It
B: And, like you said, it was people with and the and the Galbraiths.
MA: Yes. [laughs]
the Wilsons
B: And so you were a newcomer from Baltimore and you felt like an outsider.
County,
MA: A.s.,d my father being a natural born citizen, and my
Ar•tOS 33
mother of course -- my mother and father -- mostly my mother they went down near the water near Baltimore and she met him -- her marriage was taken care of by her parents. I don't know. He must have been Polish. I remember the name Stefaninski. Because we all tease her about Stefaninski.
B: That was who she was supposed to marry?
MA: Yes. My grandfather was seriously hurt on the B&O Railroad, so they gave him a trip back to Germany to be with his family before he would die. So, of course, my mother went there, and he was this good­ looking fellow. He was sort of a ship's doctor.
But he was polishing the banisters when she first saw him, I think. But she fell very much in love with him. And he was twenty years older than she was.
B: Really?
MA: He was one year older than my grandmother.
B: Your father was twenty years older than your mother?
MA: Yes. So they came back and her father died, and she never married Stefaninski. She married my father instead.
B: That probably would not have been allowed had her
father not died.
AMOS 34
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
Oh, no.
She would have had to have married Stefaninski. Yes.
What was your father's first name? John. John Christian Hetzsch.
And that was the last name that you grew up with, and so you probably were ridiculed quite a bit as a young girl.
MA: That's right. [laughs]
[end of side one]
We became very friendly. At Christmastime I had a card from her, and the penmanship was real bad. I hadn't heard from her in some time. She said, "I had a bad operation, and I'm not in very good shape." So I found her telephone number and called her. And she said, "Hetzsch, let's get together in Bel Air." So last May, we met.
B: Really?
MA: Yes. Seventy-one years after we graduated. [laughs]
B: Seventy-one years later! Wow!
MA: And, of course, she is weak. She has somebody with her all the time. And I haven't heard from her
AMOS 35
since she went back. I thought last Saturday, "Well, I should call her." Maybe I'll do that this Saturday. But she has cancer pretty bad.
B: Had you started to attend the Highland Presbyterian Church fairly early -- the Highland Church?
MA: Well, we talked there to Sunday School, when we went to Sunday School. We didn't go every Sunday, of course. When I was in high school, I guess I went there
B: What do you remember about the church and the church community back then, in the 1930s -- 1930s, or whatever period you remember.
MA: Well, they were very stern. As somebody in the community says, "You can put a container with milk and cream in a vestibule, and you'll have ice cream when you get out." It was so cold. [laughs]
B: Oh! [laughs]
MA: But you didn't sit in anybody else's seat. You sat in certain places.
B: Everyone had their own seats in the sanctuary?
MA: Yes. Well, that's more or less true now. B: Pretty much.
MA: But I remember going one time when I was about
fourteen or fifteen, and I sat down in this seat and this lady came and said, "You are sitting in my
seat. Please move." And that hurt.
B: Oh, sure.
[laughs]
MA: Because we had one lady in the community that that was said to, she never did come back to Highland Church, because of that very thing. Louis Walter's wife. She contributes to the Fund on Louis' birthday and at Christmastime, I guess, every year. And she sends flowers in his memory. But, you know, he came so regularly.
B: She just couldn't bear to come back after that.
MA: No. And she never has forgiven them. I feel sorry because it's a bitterness in her, and she lives all alone, and both of her children were mentally
deficient, and the one And maybe you heard of Mr.
at the present time.
so much. And
because she appeared before the group that decided that the children would be going to Spring Grove, they came to me -- and his wife came to me before they started the school -- and we had them at Highland for a while, you know? But then, Mr.
Walter never really forgave Mr. Betting for appearing in -- well, I guess you'd say to protect the children, really, and to give them as much as they could. But then, both of them were sent back home again. And Gary has been there. But she
wouldn't let him do anything, and he got -- well, he was quite a beast before they took him back. But then, he drove a car and he came back one day. He had been to the to get some Cokes and
-- she was a great snacker. [laughs] And somebody had reported him. He didn't have a license, I guess. So that's when they took him.
And since then, he's been in Spring Grove. People were frightened of him because he walked around with a gun.
B: Oh!
MA: Yes, you'd imagine he was a soldier. And my great­ grandson is a great gun boy. So I don't know.
B: What pastor do you remember first from the Highland Church?
MA: Mr. Irving.
B: Reverend Irving?
MA: Yes. And then Mr. Price. We had the Literary Digest. that we had to read and give reports from. Some of our boys would write some very naughty things on that, and throw it over to the next. [laughs] And Mr. Irving would come over and give us a sermon. [laughs] I remember Kenneth Wilson was in that class. One of the There were just two of us from our class living now, and one is
Virginia Stewart, a cousin of to Inez, really. And she's good shape.
A sister not in very
B: When you're thinking back over your years as an educator, what stands out in your mind as accomplishments?
MA: Do you mean in the boys and girls I taught?
B: Yes. And how education was to education in those days. You watched all of your students become adults, because you've stayed in the community.
MA: Yes. Some of them did very well. One or two have been in jail. [laughs] One because he assaulted a
on the car was open, and his wife fell out. Well, she died as a result of it. You know, I taught grandchildren some of the first children I taught. So they had a respect for me, so they had a respect for -- I mean, the children had to have respect. I remember David coming up to me and patting me on the stomach and saying, "I
can tie my shoes now. [laughs]
B: [laughs]
I can come to school."
MA: Now they don't have to tie shoes. They just use velcro. [laughs]
B: Was that the test back then? If you could tie your
shoes, you could come to school?
MA: That's told me. [laughs] And I taught and Betty, and then I taught David and
B: Now, you've taught whole families. I know you taught all of my brothers and sisters.
MA: Yes.
B: We were a new family.
MA: You were newcomers. [laughs]
B: We were newcomers in 1946. Very new. [laughs]
MA: What happened to -- I think it was in Daisy
's room and Daisy and I went over to see your mother. I remember when they came down, they didn't need a bus. I guess they did come all the way down to the store.
B: Yes. My brothers did. We all walked down to Arnold's Store to catch the bus.
MA: Yes.
B: It was about a mile.
MA: Oh, I can't think of his name -- your oldest brother.
B: Martin.
MA: Martin. The black boys would throw stones at him.
And I don't know what he got into. I believe he was hurt. I think that's why Daisy and I took him home. And that's when I first met your grandmother and
your mother.
B: Oh, you met my grandmother? MA: Yes.
B: She was still living?
MA: Yes.
B: I never even knew my grandmother. She died before I was born.
MA: We kept waiting for the [laughs]
to have a girl.
B: Oh, really? [laughs] She finally did in 19952 -- my sister.
MA: And you've done so well -- all of you. B: Oh, thank you. [laughs]
MA: We just had the same books. I mean, we had to count all the books. I don't know whether they know how many books they have now. But now, if a book isn't published for a year or two -- well, it's no good.
B: Right.
MA: And they burn them.
B: Oh.
MA: I can't get over the burning books! [laughs] I remember one of the things at Highland, after we were in elementary school -- we had just so many things, I guess, in the library. We were our own librarians, of course. The Superintendent before
AMOS 41
Willis sent this lady up one summer to clean the library out -- to get it straightened out. And I remember Ted Johnson and the other custodian there talking about the bag of books. And they took a good many of them home. But one of the things that we since had started a collection of books from the community. And so they sort of started a community library. But some of those were valuable.
B: Yes.
MA: But she burned them. She had them burned. After Mr. Willis found out about that, he was quite upset. But there wasn't anything he could do about it.
B: She thought they were not appropriate for the school?
MA: Not up-to-date. Somebody had given us I don't know how many years of National Geographic. She burned all those.
B: She just took them down to the furnace, and threw them in?
MA: No, she had the custodians carry them, who had those
big barrels, back in the school, and threw them in there.
B: But they didn't burn them all. So they went through
some of them and kept them.
MA: They kept some of them.
AMOS 42
B: Well, good for Ted Johnson. [laughs]
MA: One of them, I remember, was the Preston's History of Harford County.
B: Oh.
MA: You know, I paid fifteen dollars for mine. [laughs] B: Now, why would she want to throw that out?
MA: Well, she was new to the county, I think. I don't know. Maybe the beginning of this urge. Some of the things that we have in the school now. [laughs] Because we wouldn't have advised our boys and girls to have dates in seventh grade. Or if they had problems, to come to them instead of going to their parents. Because if you thought they had a problem, you went to the parents and talked it over with them.
B: They don't do that anymore, do they?
MA: No. But parents are getting back into the school.
I don't know.
B: Schools are a lot different now. What else do you remember about the community -- the development of the Highland community? That is, the growth of the
community and some of the
MA: Well, they certainly have a lot more houses.
remember when they first built those houses. I
Mr.
Aames bought those houses. Karen Jones and
AMOS 43
There were three houses then.
B: Down on Heath Road.
MA: No. Right there on Street Road. They bought at the prune , and brought them up here and built them, and rented them. And that's where -- the house right there on the corner, across from the church -- where the Snyder's lived for so long
was built. Of course, the Snyder's were there for so long, and then Mrs. Snyder, who was always so good to my father, and he did part of her gardening for her he always took her flowers. She always remembered that. [laughs] Do you remember her parrot? Did we ever take you over?
B: Yes. So back in the twenties and thirties, there were only a few homes there in Highland, I guess.
MA: Yes.
B: Some of the original large victorian-type houses.
MA: Yes. Where the Heaths live now, and built that one where the Galbraiths live now. And
lived there for a while. But you just knew everybody. Now you don't. I don't know the people on Cherry Hill Road. And, of course, we used to when a new family moved in, we would go see them and take a cake or rolls or vegetables -- whatever.
Well, it's been about eight or ten years ago, I
AMOS 44
guess. When a new family moved in up here -- right above where is I took some vegetables and walked over there, and I rapped at the door. And finally a lady looked out her upstairs window and I told her I had come to see her and I brought these vegetables. She said, "Well, put them right down there. I'll get them when I come down. Goodbye." [laughs]
B: Oh!
MA: So I understood I wasn't I think that's the last home visit I made. I went up to where Carrie Allie used to live because she
whoever was living in her house. And so I did go up
there. And I went up there when Jean lived
there.
[laughs] Was it Jean ?
Ashton.
B: I don't remember.
MA: Vickers. Sandy Vickers. And there just isn't the feeling of closeness as there was. Although when we had our fire last year, we certainly couldn't have had more cooperation for the community from the fire companies all over Harford county. People just came and came. And when my husband died suddenly, they were very good. And when we built this house, Mr.
George Wilson and those men all came and helped out.
We had to cut the wood first. We cut the trees first, and then took the trees to the saw mill, and bring it back. So their faces were kind of curvy because the lumber is dried out. [laughs]
B: Oh! Built the house with green lumber! [laughs]
MA: You built the house right back on the same area where it was. It had been built, to begin with, by the man who was in charge of building the Rocks Road. What is his name?
B: Rocks Road or Rocks Station? MA: Rocks Road.
B:
MA:
That must have been a long time ago.
Yes. I can't think of their names. Some of the labor from Sweden -- and they had eight and nine foot ceilings. And this whole side was the living room. I remember the dining room was back in this area. And then just a small kitchen in the back. Oh, the kitchen wasn't so small. We had a stove. We could still cook by the old [laughs] And then I had gotten the stove, and that's what caused the fire. came in, and there was a leak, evidently. It just went up. I was at summer school. [laughs]
B: And your whole house burned down? MA: Yes. Completely.
B:
MA:
What year was that? 1942.
B: Oh. So you had to come back and build a house in war-time, when it was difficult to get lumber.
MA: Yes. That's why we couldn't get lumber, and couldn't get labor, either. And it took a long while to get the house built. That little house
I don't know whether you noticed it -- when you came past 's. They had been using it to put
in, and we were the first one -- one mothers and the other mothers had it with the two boys. [laughs] So Charlie Glasgow said, "I'll clean that at the feet house, and you can move there." So we did. And it was -- well, not as big as this now, but I remember to the floor.
B: Oh.
MA: But we just had the one bedroom. we just had two rooms.
B: And you stayed there until your
MA: When the barn burned last year, that was just fifty years and one day after the house had burned.
B: Fifty years and one day.
MA: The house went down July 8th and the barn went down July 9th. And just a year before that, the Davis' house had burned, right over here.
AMOS 47
B:
MA:
I don't even remember that.
You see, it was a nice big house. They had
housing beside them, where they lived. And I guess they never did build until Jack got married. His mother died in that little house.
B: When did the Nimnows move here? Were they new, too?
MA: No. The Laddins moved here, and Tommy Nimnow was a nephew of them. So they moved back in the 1800s. I don't know how Tommy met Isabel because she was from
the South, and she was teaching in somehow they met.
B: She still has somewhat of an accent.
MA: And I hear her telling once in a while she was a strict Baptist, and Mrs. Laddin insisted on her being married in the Episcopal Church up here -­ Holy Cross. [laughs]
B: Oh.
But
MA: So every once in a while she still talks about that.
Well, once in a while Now since they've got different hymn books, you know, the Episcopalians have changed, too. Just like the Presbyterians have. [laughs] have their new minister. Their other minister just left --
of this year.
B: Slate Ridge?
AMOS 48
MA:
B:
MA:
B:
MA:
Yes.
Well, wasn't Henry Heaves over there? Yes. He was the interim there.
He was the interim? So they have a new pastor now? Yes. So I don't know what we're doing. [laughs]
B: At Highland, are they still looking for a new pastor there?
MA: Yes.
B: Have they started interviewing?
MA: I don't think they started interviewing. I think
they're still reading They're relying on
the committee, and I guess it takes a long while to get twenty dossiers around to all nine. [laughs]
B: Right.
MA: But
on Sunday to pray for them. They need a
lot of prayers. And they would be starting to interview soon. So I took from that that they hadn't interviewed anybody yet. But the Presbyterians will be pretty strict on them, too. Of course, some of us don't have very good feeling toward the Presbyterians. [laughs]
B: Without changing the subject, tell me about farming here on your farm, back when you first got married.
MA: Well, when we first got married, this was all pine trees here.
B:
MA: Oh, it
Yes. was?
B: So you had to clear it?
MA: We had one cow and two horses.
B: Oh, really?
MA: Yes. And down near the woods there was a log cabin, which had been built. And that's where we kept our animals. There were two houses here. In fact, this place was two places. [laughs] Fishers and who owned the other one? Well, anyway, Nelson's cousin bought the two places, and we bought it from him.
But we had to cut a lot of pine trees. We had to do a lot to get it. [laughs] It's quite different
even since .Nelson's been gone, we've
And, of course, he wouldn't have thought of having corn and hay on another two or three different farms, like we do now. [laughs]
B: And your son continues to farm the place pretty much?
MA: Yes.
B: And how many acres are you farming crops? MA:
B: You don't have a dairy herd anymore, do you?
MA: Yes.
B: You do?
MA:
B:
MA:
About a hundred a day. Oh, really?
Yes. Yes, Julie and Matt take care of that mostly. bud helps out. But it keeps Bud busy repairing machinery. [laughs]
B: That's right. Julie takes care of the herds. MA: Yes. Keeps all the records.
B: And then Nelson takes care of the fields? MA: Yes.
B: And I guess you grow your own corn for the cows?
MA: Yes. But we don't grow soybean. We just do the corn and the hay.
B: So there's still a good-working farm here.
MA: Yes. It's better
been fertilized and manured.
[ laughs] It's [laughs]
B: When you first came here, did you plow the fields with your horses?
MA: Yes.
B: That would have been in the thirties?
MA: Yes. We came over here in 1931, when Edward James Nelson was born. Even my father-in-law said, "Up there in the wilderness." [laughs] And I remember Nelson was so sick, and I called Dr. Arthur. We didn't have a telephone, even when the house burned. Anyway, I got word to Dr. Arthur and he came down,
and he told me how sick Nelson was. Then he said, "I'd rather be buried back here." [laughs]
B: I guess it was pretty remote back then. [laughs] MA: But then I had my mother down over the , and my mother-in-law down below. [laughs] Well,
families were closer together. Families did things for each other.
B: Right.
MA: is doing a history, where she's having each one of the families -- the nine families
-- to write-up what they have done, and some interesting things. It's so interesting. Marsha brought me her copy, while been sitting around, reading. [laughs] I told her there ought to be a copy of them in the library. And in the archives, by all means. But all the families
hadn't written about them. families.
about their own
B: Which nine families? Do you mean the Heitzes and the Wilsons, or which families?
MA: The Wilsons. The one family of Wilsons. I guess his father's name was George. And then the oldest son who lives where Kathryn is now, was George.
George and John. And he married one of the Schuster girls, and they didn't name him George. Yes, they
did. Their first boy was George. He lives in Florida now. But they take their names
Do you have Elizabeth Stevens on your list?
B: No. I don't think so.
MA: They lived where the Galbraiths do now. And she talks about walking over to fields to go to -- oh, what was the schoolhouse they just tore down?
B: Right on Greer Nursery Road? MA: Yes.
B: Is that what it was called?
MA: Yes. Eleanor Morris has a picture of it. Her parents had gone there, too. The great big houses are gone up there now.
B: I know. They're really big. You wonder who is going to live there.
MA: I wonder. And, of course, they won't be living there very long before they have their first
B: That's right! It seems to be that way. Right.
MA: It is. Like across from where Jack used to live. There are just so many houses back in that area.
B: Well, I think we have to sum-up now. Do you have
any little stories to tell? Any anecdotes that you would like to tell? Or do you want to sum-up your
career? Your life in Highland?
MA: It's been very interesting. There have been some hard times, some sad times. But some good times. And they've been very good to me. [laughs] Last year Susan Eiler did a history on me -- I'll let you read that. [laughs]
B: Oh!
MA: She has some of the things not quite straight, but anyway. As a seventh grader, I thought it was a good little thing. So I right after Dorothy Ford sent me this clipping. I thought, "Oh, I'll get it."
B: So you were Harford County's first home teacher, you said.
MA: Yes. That was during that time when I wasn't teaching at Highland.
B: Because you had gone home to have your first child. MA: Yes.
B: And you taught Howard Bush, you said.
MA: Yes. The family still lives there. You know, they started to build a house, and they've never built anymore than the first layer. [laughs]
B: Oh! Along 165?
MA: Yes. What is that name? Since then I taught his aunt. Well, anyway --
AMOS 54
B:
MA:
B:
So you were saying you taught a black student who -­ Had a white mother.
Had a white mother, and said the black schools would not accept him and the white schools would not. And Juitsville would not accept him because he was black.
MA: Yes.
B: So you taught him at home for how long?
MA: Two years. He didn't especially want to come back. He got the itch there one time. [laughs] I started teaching right after I had come from the hospital for a while -- teaching him. I was going back for check-ups, and I had this terrible itching on my arms, and one of the young doctors were very upset about what it was because I had so many infections, and one thing or another. And this older doctor came in and said, "Hell, she's got The Itch." [laughs]
B: "She's got The Itch?"
MA: Yes. These little things
B: Maybe you had the Shingles, or something like that.
MA: No. I got off the table soon. [laughs] The didn't want to come to school
She had to call him every time to get him in. And he didn't do his work very well. But I met his wife
AMOS 55
afterwards. I guess that was in the hospital. I'd meet so many people in the hospital. And he had been killed in an accident. Richard Keila.
B: Who was this -- your home teaching student? MA: Yes. He had sort of a reputation. [laughs]
She never went to school. She was sick, and one thing or another. So she had home teaching. And then she had three boys, and I think they had home teaching. [laughs] They didn't
accounting, more or less. But they had a wonderful garden. I'm surprised at how much they do, and evidently, they get quite a big sum when
built a house. But they much. [laughs]
B: You like to garden, too, don't you? MA: Yes.
B: Do you still have a garden every summer? MA: Well, I don't have one this summer.
B: No.
MA: [laughs] Just keeping me out of it. I've been wanting to pull some weeds, but I just can't get down and stoop so much. I don't want to fall down. I don't mind dying in the garden, but
[laughs]
B: You don't want a broken arm in the garden! [laughs]
I
l
AMOS 56
MA: [laughs]
B: This interview is just about over. This tape is just about done. I just want to thank you for your time. It's been fun.
MA: Well, I've enjoyed it.
End of Interview